Bands that you've changed your mind about.

God, i remember the hoopla surrounding velveeta caccoon; what a crock they were and later turned out to be. Thanks for the trip down memory lane, Devamitra.If i had to contribute to this list, i'd say that, even though i perform in a metal band, i've had enough of listening to metal. Having done so for 25 years now, i've heard pretty much everything metal will be able to throw my way. This isn't to say that i've given up on metal per se, i'm just exceptionally tepid on that subject now. Ah well. it had a good run.

The only band I can honestly say I've taken another hard look (listen) at is Nile.....That is to say "OLD" Nile. Ergo "Amongst the Catacombs of Nephren-Ka" and "Black Seeds of Vengeance". Nile's recent albums are a major disappointment compared to there earlier works.

God, i remember the hoopla surrounding velveeta caccoon; what a crock they were and later turned out to be.

What's the story w/ Velvet Cacoon again? If somebody wants to give a little overview of their rise and fall that would be great. I know what broadly happened, but if somebody would recount some details, explain the ins and outs, and put it in context, I think that would be a fun story to read.

at one point I considered this band to be the crowning achievement of metal. since the release of Ruun, they've rocketed towards irrelevance. The latest album Axioma Ethica Odini, which I'll admit I've only heard once, seems like an utter disaster. I don't know if I'll bother playing it again, but it smacks to me of the kind of moron metal that all of the grunge proponents who never got over the demise of Alice in Chains and Soundgarden will embrace. Enslaved are more committed than ever to being a progressive band, and cloyingly they've got even more black metal-approved vocals in the mix, but lyrically and technically they're less adventurous than Meshuggah. I can imagine a lot of kids in baseball caps lining up to wax rhapsodic about how "experimental" the record is - they're no doubt the same people who think Ruun is superlative - and finding a space for the absurdly titled Axioma Ethica Odini amid their collection of Dillinger Escape Plan and Genghis Tron cds. for me, Enslaved are dead and now worthy targets for all of the Chuck Schuldiner-type jokes people are fond of around here.

God, i remember the hoopla surrounding velveeta caccoon; what a crock they were and later turned out to be.

What's the story w/ Velvet Cacoon again? If somebody wants to give a little overview of their rise and fall that would be great. I know what broadly happened, but if somebody would recount some details, explain the ins and outs, and put it in context, I think that would be a fun story to read.

Nobody's ever going to know the full story except for Josh and a few friends from our favorite extreme underground kvltmetal website www.fmp666.com and their hooliganism.

Though, here's what I've gathered...

Before 2005, I didn't even know what a Hipster was; five years later they're everywhere. Some say it was Sunn O))), Xasthur and Wolves in the Throne Room, but it was really Velvet Cacoon that ushered in the elusive "Third Wave" of Black Metal, Post-Black Metal, or Black Metal fused with Post-Rock/ Shoegazing Indie. I think they missed the point of the use of ambiance in Black Metal, but regardless, Velvet Cacoon emerged with full support from Full Moon Productions, which prior to Velvet Cacoon's arrival, their website's forum was a serious battlefield in the semantic vying for true and kvlt-ness of the self and the band whom you sponsor (at a certain point, everyone could be located and contact via the fmp forums).

Velvet Cacoon stood apart from all other bands, producing a so-called sensational album, "Genevieve," which was an exercise in ultra minimalist Black Metal with a very rich and thick atmosphere that screamed Ildjarn and Burzum. It definitely had its moments, but I wouldn't be so sure as to call it the best thing since sliced bread. They were known as an Ecofascist band, and would profess a connection with ELF, or Earth Liberation Front, a sister-group of ALF, the animal liberation front. Instead of burning churches, they were imploring their fans to burn down building that harm the environment, and saw industrial-capitalism in-league, or at least within the same framework as that which Judeo-Christianity worked. Their song titles were tasteful, fusing a sense of delicacy with the occult. P.S. Nautical = Psychonautical (The Chaos Magic of Peter Carroll, drug trips and gnosis through euphoria). All of this somehow reverberated back to the common denominator that they were fusing spirituality with green anarchism.

Then came the Hipsters.

Whereas Black Metal was too challenging for the liberal to digest, Velvet Cacoon was not. They shared many of the radical viewpoints that the hipster scene had already previously held, but hipsters never actually act upon these things (that's what a liberal does, they talk about things but never act upon them- I like to call them armchair environmentalists).

Basically, everything about Velvet Cacoon somehow resonated within the soul of the Bachelor's degree level 20 something that retreats from their dorm room to a main street Ethiopian restaurant for a night of multiculturalism and wine sipping armchair green politics.

Sunn O))) Released "Black One" that year, which was welcomed by the hipster community, and also presented overt Black Metal elements, such a Malefic from Xasthur appearing and Wrest from Leviathan as guest vocalists.

Striborg got big out of nowhere. Wolves in The Throne Room saw a way into fame. Mastodon, The Sword, etc... all of that bullshit.

Deathcore I guess was coming into formation, which I'm sure the hipsters were aware of, and being tired with their long-exhausted post-rock crap, they decided to usurp Black Metal in retaliation to the jocks learning what a blast-beat was and thinking that a breakdown would be a great followup to it.

From 2005-2008, I guess I can say that I got laid more often than not because of this, from some pretty hot hippie/hipster chicks, but that doesn't excuse the fact that they have no integrity at all.

Back to the story, Velvet Cacoon dropped the bombshell that their demos and full-on shoegazing/folk-rock/dreampop records were stolen from an already establish artist that nobody would ever find out about without them saying something about it. They also claimed that nothing was true concerning the ecofascism, green politics, and stories of ELF activity. They basically said that Genevieve was recorded in a very short period of time, maybe an afternoon if I'm correct (I can't remember really how it was phrased). The drug trips were legit though, and the artist Josh did say that the atmosphere evoked in the album was definitely something worthy of Black Metal merit.

Velvet Cacoon still did well, and got very famous. Some Black Metal bands would have never gotten that exposure and promotion without proper managing. People are still divided about the issue. Velvet Cacoon doesn't bother me personally, it's just not my favorite material out there. Their new band is called Clair Cassis, which is basically a continuation of what they were doing with VC, but with what they call a more "Smokey, Bassy Atmosphere." I think there's real drums in the band too instead of a drums machine... that's what I've heard anyway.

Does anyone else find that quite often if they like a band straight away their quicker to tire of them but if their not certain about a band and try listening to them a few times they grow to love the band? It's almost as though if something is instantly gratifying it doesn't have a great deal of substance.

Does anyone else find that quite often if they like a band straight away their quicker to tire of them but if their not certain about a band and try listening to them a few times they grow to love the band? It's almost as though if something is instantly gratifying it doesn't have a great deal of substance.

This isn't true all the time though, just quite often.

Honestly, not all that often, though it's happened a lot in the past (perhaps shifting where I got recommendations from made a lot of the difference). I find typically that the albums that I appreciate immediately on an aesthetic level are the same ones that I appreciate over a long time span. On the other hand, if by a "few times" you mean literally something like three listens... well, high quality albums are typically too dense or subtle to process fully the first time round.

For me, the early listens are reflective of how they'll ultimately pan out. Not that I haven't been "fooled" before, but if it does what it's suppose to on first listen that is a good sign, as opposed to something where I have to sit and wonder "do I like this" "is this good" over and over.